Greener Meadowes
by gankutsu0u
Summary: Dorcas finds a fellow student up late in the common room and he changes her life forever.
1. Chapter 1

Dorcas was having difficulty sleeping, what with the thunderstorm roaring just outside her window. The silencing charm had worn off an hour ago and everyone else in her dorm seemed to have successfully fallen into impenetrable slumber.

With a grunt of frustration, she threw her legs over the side of the bed and resolved to seek out the peace and solitude of the abandoned common room. With a quick glance at her watch she found it was 4am, an optimum time to find the common room empty, everyone would be asleep, hopefully no one else had the same idea she had.

Unfortunately someone did.

It was Remus Lupin. The bookish, scrawny boy that hung out with the imps Potter and Black. How he managed to join their ranks was beyond her.

For a moment she stopped at the top of the stairs and watched him silently. He was still in his uniform, sitting on the floor hunched over the coffee table where books and parchment had been strewn about haphazardly. His face was hidden by his light brown fringe but she watched his nose at it twitched slightly and then without warning, he was looking up at the staircase at her.

"Hello?" he asked a little shakily.

Deciding it was juvenile to run back up and hide now that she had been caught, she pulled her robe more tightly around her and descended the stairs. "Hi Remus," she said dully. He gave her a shy little smile and began collecting his things. "Oh! No, you don't have to leave on my account, please," she sat on the sofa directly behind him, "I just came down here 'cause I couldn't sleep." She pulled her feet up onto the sofa, leaning back to rest her head on the arm, she watched the boy with bated breath as he turned to look at her.

"You're Dorcas, right?" he asked. She nodded.

"Yup, we've only sat next to each other in potions for the whole semester."

There was a loud crack of thunder, neither of them jumped.

"Yes," he shook himself from his thoughts, "yes, sorry. Potions is never really my strong suit, I do my best to pay attention."

"Must be hard with Potter constantly chattering in your ear." The boy gave a little laugh at that.

"Yes it gets quite annoying," he said brightly. He drew his legs up to his chest and made to lean his side up against the front of the sofa, he looked at her properly for the first time and she saw how truly tired he looked and wondered how long he had been awake for.

"Did you get any sleep at all?" she asked. He shook his head.

"I get these awful bouts of insomnia. The storm's actually done a good job keeping me up. Did the soundproofing charm wear off up there?" he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Oh, do the boys use one too? I thought us girls were the only ones clever enough to use them."

He gave a light laugh, "They didn't until I showed up." Halfway through his sentence she saw his tone and expression warp into something like shame. She frowned at him, trying to riddle this odd little sixth-year out.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"Yeah! Sorry I'm a little…out of sorts today," he said with a sad smile. She had the feeling that Lupin was hiding something. She couldn't figure out if his being so vague was enticing or annoying.

"You sick?" He let out a breathy laugh and began to nervously fumble with his fingers. She had decided that Lupin was a dreadful liar. "Can't be anything _that_ bad, otherwise what would you be doing here?"

"I tell myself that all the time…" he said softly, more to himself than to Dorcas.

She hadn't spoken to Remus that long and already she was beginning to understand that there was a darkness, a deep sadness to him that he fought hard to never let show. It must have been divine intervention to catch Remus in such a vulnerable state, she thought. He looked truly tired, sitting there before her, and not just in need of sleep, Remus looks mentally and emotionally tired. Maybe what he needed was a friend, maybe someone to talk to that wasn't one of those bumbling idiots he was always hanging around with, maybe he needed fresh ears to listen.

"Remus, you are far more interesting that I originally gave you credit for." He looked up at her with his wide puppy-dog eyes, confusion etched into his brow. "I mean, whatever it is you're going through, if you want someone to…" the words came out before she could stop herself, "talk to."

"Thanks. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable…here you are looking for peace and quiet and I'm here-"

"You apologize way too much, you know that?" she said, smiling at him, he smiled lopsidedly back at her.


	2. Chapter 2

"Hey Remus."

"Hello Doe."

Dorcas took her usual seat beside Remus as professor Slughorn hastily entered the classroom, muttering to himself absently. "I bet he's still right pissed about Finnegan setting his sofa on fire last night," she whispered into Remus's ear. He gave a mischievous smirk and eyed the professor as he scurried about the classroom as if none of the students were even present.

"Yes I hear it's the closest thing to actual danger the man's gotten in decades." There was a wave of snickering at Remus's comment. Dorcas smiled, she didn't know Remus was funny, at least, funny in the humorous kind of way.

Class resumed and ended in its usual banal fashion. She watched Remus and James get up and leave together while she stayed behind to finish her notes as she was always a notoriously slow note taker.

She did a lot of observing lately.

Their awkward acquaintance blossomed into a semi-flirtatious friendship over the coming months and Dorcas did a lot of observing during that time. She watched how Remus was always the quieter of his three companions who were always around him almost like his own personal set of body guards. The four boys behaved like brothers towards one another, with Remus taking the role as the docile, sickly one that needed protecting. It was this sickly nature that Dorcas had figured most fascinating.

Remus's heath fluctuated almost rhythmically. For about two weeks he seemed a normal, healthy teenaged boy, but soon after his health would deteriorate, these were the days that she would find him curled up studying in the common room during the wee hours of the morning. He would get thinner, hollows would form in his eyes and his pallor grew sicklier by the day until she noticed that he would be absent from class by the end of the month. He would return to class looking worse for the wear, and sometimes she would catch a glimpse of a bandaged wrist or a dark bruise hidden by a strategically placed shirt collar.

How had she not noticed until now?

 _Because you didn't give a hippogriff's behind about him until that night in the common room_ , she thought. She began to doubt that the friendship with him was even genuine, that is was subconsciously plotted as a device to get to know him better, to divulge his dark secrets.

"Hey," came a voice from behind her that sent her almost flying off her armchair. She spun around to find Remus giving her his signature lopsided smirk. "I was wondering if you would mind letting me borrow your potions notes from when I was out last week?"

Dark rings under his eyes from lack of sleep, there was a nasty bruise on his left wrist, the way he's standing, he's using some of the chair to support himself, he was limping today he must have hurt his leg, his problem, whatever it was, had flared up again, almost like clockwork.

"Y-Yeah of course," she turned and shakily dug through her bag, pulling out her potions notebook, "you've been out quite a lot lately," she said, not daring to look him in the eye as she handed him the notebook.

"Have I?" he said, straightening up. _He's a dreadful liar. It's kind of cute._

"Yeah, you were out a couple weeks ago. And a few weeks before-"

"My mother has an illness," he had interrupted her. She finally looked up into his eyes and found them to be completely closed-off and humorless. _He's still lying though!_ She could tell by the slight waver in his voice. Was he really a bad liar or had she observed him so keenly over the last few months that she could now read him like a book?

"Does she?" she said, her tone dripping with skepticism.

"Yes. Dumbledore arranges for me to have monthly visits with her. I'm sorry for not telling you, didn't seem like you needed to know."

And with that he took off. It wasn't until she had finally begun packing her things that she saw that he didn't even bother taking the notebook.


	3. Chapter 3

The observations had stopped. Soon Dorcas had managed to almost forget what it was like to find Remus Lupin remotely interesting. The night of the thunderstorm, she had caught him sleep-deprived and hurting, vulnerable. She thought she could get Remus to open up to her like that again, but she was wrong. Since her mild interrogation in the common room Remus had all but ignored her existence entirely. Offering one, and if she was lucky two-word answers to anything Dorcas said to him. He had closed her off.

 _You got too close, Doe._ She watched with something like envy as Remus and his three companions made off through the great hall, laughing and joking all the while.

Exam week arrived and with it came a new wave of panic that pushed all thoughts of Remus and his dark secret to the far recesses of her mind. Her first exam was in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Locking herself away in her dorm, she cracked open her textbook and began studying until her eyes crossed.

By the time she had memorized most of the required defensive spells she was ready to move on to nocturnal creatures, her dorm mates were already fast asleep around her.

"Werewolves…" she muttered to herself as she began scribbling down the basic definitions and characteristics of the creature.

"…monthly transformations…will attack self if unable to find human vict-"

She stopped, pulling her snarled blonde hair back from her face as to better see the page before her. The trigger words popped out at her immediately… _painful monthly transformations, pre-moon symptoms include chronic insomnia and vivid night terrors, will harm self if unable to find human victim…_

"Merlin's hairy balls!" she cried.

A throw pillow hit her square in the face, "shut up Doe! Some of us got bloody exams in the morning!"

With a half-hearted apology Dorcas turned to the window beside her bed, eagerly searching out the moon. It was full.

Her bets were Remus wouldn't be in potions tomorrow.

"Where's Lupin?"

Dorcas had confronted Remus's three companions (who looked like they had gotten just as much sleep as she did, which wasn't much) in the Great Hall that afternoon when Remus didn't show up for potions. While Pettigrew, the imp of a boy that always chased after the other three like a lost puppy, cowered in the girl's presence, Potter and Black were far less intimidated.

"Went to see his mum," said James matter-of-factly.

"He should be back tomorrow," said Sirius who then added, "but if you're looking for a snog I can meet you in a half-ho—"

She took off back to her seat without hearing the rest.

As Sirius said, that Saturday Remus was back. She found him sitting by the Quidditch pitch with a fairly large book in his lap and was reading intently. This was it. She was going to confront him. _Why? Why am I doing this?_ She closed her eyes for a moment as she approached as she came to her resolve. _Remus needs to know he has a friend who will listen. He lied because he was scared of the consequences of you finding out. He needs to know you don't care. That's why you're doing this._

"Hey Remus!" she said a little too cheerily as she sat beside him on the grass. She felt his body stiffen beside her.

"Hello," he said, his voice was low and hoarse. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week, which might as well been the truth, and there was a large bruise along his neck and the faintest hint of scab tissue near the collar of his jumper.

"You weren't in class yesterday," she said, he just shook his head the slightest bit; she imagined the bruise on his neck gave him little room for movement of his head. "Look, I want to say something, alright? And please just…don't interrupt me, or get up and leave or-"

She stopped when she saw that Remus was clutching the corners of his book with weak, trembling hands as if it were the only thing keeping him from being yanked away from the earth. "Remus…"

"No…" he breathed, closing his eyes. "Don't say it…please…" his voice was trembling, soft and weak like a dying leaf on a branch, rattling in a strong wind.

"Why don't you want me to say it?"

"I've…I don't know what more I can do…I just want to be normal…" the weakness, the sadness in his voice was breaking her heart, she immediately wrapped both arms around his trembling form, he didn't resist her.

"Remus," she said softly, bringing her lips close to his ear, "you're the most normal, boy one could meet," as he made to protest she continued, "on the outside. But I've seen the Remus that exists on the inside. The one I talked to in the common room during the storm. The Remus that's brave, braver than someone our age should have to be. I can't pretend to understand what it's like to go through what you do, but I do understand the level of strength and bravery it takes to overcome it. To face each day knowing you'll have to face that pain again and come to class and give everyone that goofy lopsided grin of yours and act like you're an average kid. When you are so much more than that."

She closed her eyes and pulled him in closer. As her cheek touched his, she felt a hot tear slip from his eye. They sat like that in silence for a long while, keeping each other warm as the wind whipped about them.

A storm was coming, but in that moment, they both felt untouchable.


	4. Chapter 4

"Goon."

"Wanker."

"Puff."

"Sod."

"Idiot."

"Melodramacist."

Dorcas threw her hands up in the air, "now come on Remus! How can you expect to insult whatever imbecile victim you meet when they can't even understand what the bloody hell the insult means?"

"She's got a point Moon," said Sirius who was reading a magazine of questionable taste in the armchair across from the giggling couple.

"I don't really see what the whole point of this is to begin with!" said Remus breathily.

"You're too bloody soft! If you're going to be an Auror the first thing they teach you in training is verbal altercation!" said Dorcas, jabbing Remus in the chest with her finger.

"That's not true!"

"Prove me wrong!"

Seventh year had rolled around, the year students had to buckle down and seriously consider their plans after graduation from Hogwarts. Dorcas and Remus, who had gone public as an official couple somewhere towards the end of last term, had both decided on entering Auror training. Remus had serious doubts that they would allow a werewolf to attend Auror training, but his status as the only werewolf to attend a wizarding school as well as being a prefect in fifth year and having some of the best grades in his class had convinced Dorcas that Remus should be considered for training.

"Just leave him in my office miss Meadowes. When I'm done with him he'll be cursing like a giant and dishing out insults like professor Binns on a Monday," said Sirius with mock professionalism.

"Thanks, but I fear any more time with either you or James will cause his intelligence quotient to drop significantly," said Dorcas.

"Well now see maybe Moony's on to something! I have no idea what in the seven hells an intelligence quota is but I'm already insulted!"

Laughter filled the common room.

Meetings with the head of each house began a few days later. Everyone was called in alphabetically so while Sirius and James Potter's girlfriend, Lily Evans, had their meeting on Monday, Remus, Dorcas, James and Peter all had their meetings on Thursday.

"I can't believe McGonagall said I should get a job as bloody _game keeper._ She can't be on to…our little moonlit escapades…eh?" said Sirius, craning his neck to look at Remus who was glowering at him from the other end of the room. "Nah, I don't think so either. She just thinks I'm too dumb for anything else."

"You're up Remus," said Frank Longbottom as he climbed through the portrait hole. Remus uttered a brief word of thanks and was gone.

Remus's meeting took longer than everyone else's. Anyone who was unaware of Remus's condition would probably have considered it being that his grades and status in the school were so excellent that McGonagall and him had to weed through the multitude of jobs available to him. Dorcas sat on the stairs leading up to the girls dormitory, twiddling her fingers anxiously knowing that the meeting was the opposite case.

When he did finally return, he muttered almost inaudibly that it was Amelia Lyer's turn to go up for her meeting. His friends all stood up upon his arrival, staring at him anxiously, he was trying very hard to avoid looking at anyone.

He made his way over to an unoccupied space on the sofa and when he did look up, it was to gauge who was left in the room, meaning only Dorcas, James, Peter, Sirius and Lily. Everyone else had gone to wait in their dorms.

"So?" Peter blurted out, everyone but Remus shot him a glare.

He shook his head and hunched over, placing his elbows on his knees and running his hands through his light brown hair. "She said…that I should look into low-income housing and disability insurance if I choose not to continue living with my parents when I graduate…"

Lily and Dorcas seemed to be the only two people who understood what that meant. Dorcas made her way over to the couch, sitting down beside him and wrapping her arms around him.

James made to ask what that meant when Lily answered for him, "it means Remus can't get a job."

"This is _bullshit!"_ James shot up from his spot on the arm of the sofa. "Don't you worry Moony, none of us here are going to let you…"

Remus lifted his head, turning to look at Dorcas; his eyes were glazed over with tears that refused to fall. "Some loser boyfriend you picked out for yourself, huh?"

Her face hardened at this, "don't you dare say that to me again Remus Lupin. Don't you dare." She gave his hand a squeezed and looked on the verge of tears herself.

Dorcas had to admit she lived a pretty risk-free existence. Even after Hogwarts was over she would probably find herself a cozy job at the Ministry, marry some average husband and have average kids and lead an average life and maybe even go on a vacation to Italy one year. The world's problems were never her own. She had very little to care about and very little to fight for when it came down to it. But that was before Remus had wandered into her life.

He pulled back the curtain and showed her what real strength was. What life outside the norm was like. What injustice was like. He gave her passion she didn't know she had. But it was there, buried deep within her. Looking at Remus lit a fire in her gut that sent her mind whirling with possibilities she didn't even know existed. Even Remus's little gang of Marauders broke her out of her shell of doing everything perfectly and beautifully.

"The Ministry doesn't know what a great Auror they'll be missing."

Soon it was Dorcas's turn for her meeting with their head of house. She found McGonagall scribbling down something on a piece of parchment, as she entered and took a seat in front of her desk.

"Ah, miss Meadowes," said professor McGonagall who set down her quill to look at Dorcas shrewdly through her spectacles, "have you decided on what you would like to do after your graduation from Hogwarts?" she asked in a rather uniform tone. She could only imagine how many times she had to ask that question today.

"Y—I'm not sure, actually," she looked down at her lap and began playing with the hem of her skirt.

"It was my belief that you had ambitions to enter Auror training, is that not correct? And I must say with your grades being what they are right now, you'd have no problem-"

"I don't want a job at the Ministry," said Dorcas flatly. Professor McGonagall raised her eyebrows at this.

"This has nothing to do with what I told Mr. Lupin does it?" She felt the blood drain from her face at this. _She knew about Remus and I?_ She gave a sigh and leaned back in her chair, "if you truly find Mr. Lupin's situation unacceptable wouldn't you wish to join the ranks of people who have the power to _change_ these injustices?" Her expression sobered, Dorcas could tell that the professor was indeed sympathizing with Remus's situation, but understood the reality of it as well.

Dorcas shook her head, "there's nothing I can do to change centuries of prejudice, professor."

"I'm sure Mr. Lupin would be rather disappointed that you decided to give up your entire future because of his own personal circumstances." Dorcas looked up at her professor with hardened eyes. "Miss Meadowes, there is plenty of injustice in the world, things don't change overnight and I'm sure the sanctions against Mr. Lupin and his…fellows…won't end any time soon, you may be and old woman and I'll be dead and buried by the time it happens, but I assure you, if you give up now, they've already won."

The young witch nodded, remaining silent for a time.

"Now, is Auror training your first choice or are you going to be applying for a specific department?" The professors tone was hard and business-like, the discussion of weather or not Dorcas would be applying at the Ministry was over and decided.

"I'm not entirely sure professor…I suppose I'll apply and see what gets offered to me."

"That is typically how applying for a job works," said professor McGonagall, when Dorcas looked up she found that her professor was smiling just the smallest bit. When she got up to leave the professor called after her, "professor Dumbledore and I are both looking into what can be done for Mr. Lupin, so you can put that out of your mind for now and concentrate on studying. Wouldn't want a U to splotch your stunning resume now, would you?"

"No ma'am," said Dorcas who left McGonagall's office smilng.


End file.
